


Of birds and songs

by AeonDelirium



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Bribery, F/M, First Time, Hand Jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeonDelirium/pseuds/AeonDelirium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa Stark is doing a terrible job at being sneaky. Luckily, Sandor Clegane is the only one who knows. Adult themes ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of birds and songs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> A very special christmas gift for a good friend who enjoys this pairing. Since this is my first and probably last try at SanSan (although I realise I say this sort of thing a lot), please be gentle.  
> Merry christmas!
> 
> (I am sticking to the books concerning her age, so if underage is a no-no for you, please do not read on.)

The godswood was quiet after Dontos had left. Sansa stood among the trees with her hands folded, refusing to move. So long as she was here, she was safe. Not because the Seven would protect her, no. The gods had never protected anyone, at least not anyone that mattered. They might still protect Robb, when he marched against the Lannisters once more. But perhaps the Seven themselves were Lannisters, too, perhaps Lord Tywin had bought their favour with all the gold of Casterly Rock. Or perhaps, and this thought felt the truest in Sansa’s heart because it ached the most, and she had learned that life was full of pain, perhaps there were no gods at all.

 

Leaves rustled beneath her feet as she turned to walk at last. They were pretty, dark green and flecked with gold, as if the last days of summer had finally passed, and the evening breeze that greeted her when she stepped on cobblestone once more was almost cool. She stepped on stone and all her calm fell from her like crumbling paint. Her heart began to race within her chest as her muscles tensed one by one, the same tenseness that was there when she went to bed at night and when she rose in the morning, eating away at her day after day. What if they found out? What if they caught her? What if they had been watching her all along, judging, waiting to see how far she would go, how hard her sentence would have to be? What if it was all a plan devised by Joffrey to torment her? What if he had sent Dontos? What if –

Sansa had to slap her hands over her mouth in order to stifle a scream when she turned a corner and found herself face to face with a breastplate of boiled leather.

 

“It’s a dangerous hour for a little bird to be out of her cage … _again._ ” _Again_ , Sansa echoed in her head. _No, no_ please. _Not again._

Sandor Clegane did not smile as he looked down at her in the darkness, but then it was hard to tell with his face. Sansa flinched away from it before she could help it, taking a step back as she dropped her gaze to the floor. It was always safest to look to the floor. It was proper, after all. It was what was expected.

And still, Clegane only seemed to tense when she looked away, as if confirmed in his assumptions. He made a step towards her, she made another step back, he made a step towards her, until she finally understood that it was wiser not to move.

“I was in the godswood, S-” _Ser,_ she wanted to say, but thought better of it, biting her lip before the word slipped from it. “Praying. I was praying.” _Again. Not again._ The words sounded clumsy as she said them, the lie so bad it almost hurt. She pressed her lips together. Clegane snarled, and it was little better than his dog-faced helm.

“Aye, girl,” he growled, his eyes two hot coals set in his misshapen face as if they’d melted away his skin just now. “That’s what you told me the last time, and I’ll be damned if I don’t hear it again soon enough. But do you think I believe it?”

_He’s drunk again_ , she tried to tell herself, _he must be drunk. He won’t remember any of this come morning._ Of course he wasn’t. Not this time, not when she needed him to be. She had been frightened by the sour smell when she had run into him the other night, knowing wine made men dangerous. But Sandor Clegane was not like other men. He had not been mindlessly hopelessly drunk like Dontos and not stupidly dangerously drunk like Joffrey. He had seemed careless, and at the same time angry, like … _like a dog,_ she thought. The way he hadn’t had full control of his tongue and body, how he had cursed even more than he used to. _Barking like an angry dog._

Tonight, there wasn’t even the slightest slur in his voice, no matter how much she _wanted_ it to be there.

 

Meanwhile, he was still waiting for his answer.

“Do you think I believe your little lies?” he bellowed all of a sudden, and now she did take another step back, a hasty one, one that made her step on the hem of her dress and stumble. She gasped when his hand closed around her wrist to catch her, and he did not let go, patiently waiting for her to find her feet. He did not let go when she stood steadily once more, his grip so tight it brought tears to her eyes, and she could not even blink them away, instead staring up at him like a frightened deer as she slowly shook her head.

“N-no, Ser,” she managed, and bit her lip after the word had slipped out, but it was too late. The Hound’s eyes narrowed for a moment.

“You’ll have to either learn how to lie,” he growled, pulling her closer, close enough for her to smell onions and burned meat on his breath, and for a sickening moment she could not help but imagine it was _his_ meat burning, “or learn how to not get caught. Perhaps I had better bring you before the Queen straight away, see what she thinks of your pretty little lies.”

Her face fell. “No, please,” she whispered, shaking her head. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “Please don’t. I promise I won’t –” The breath caught in her throat with a painful gasp when his grip tightened around her slender wrist.

“You won’t _what_?” he hissed. “Gods, girl, did they not teach you how to think before you open your pretty little mouth?” He turned to walk, dragging her along. “Keep your tongue behind your teeth now, if you don’t want to wake the Queen yourself.”

 

They did not encounter Boros Blount that night when they came to the drawbridge; in fact they did not encounter any of the Kingsguard, and so Sansa could only guess that the Hound himself had been on duty before he found her. The thought made her frown. A knight of the Kingsguard who abandoned his post had to fear expulsion, and worse … _but he is no knight. Perhaps he thinks the same does not apply to him._

The Queen would hardly care, not with the news he would bring her, news that Sansa Stark had been caught out of her chambers at a strange hour _again,_ with no better excuse than a mouthful of sad little lies. Cersei was not stupid, she would know. She might not know exactly what she had been up to, but she would know that it was something forbidden. She would lock her in her chambers, or worse. She would see to it that she never saw Dontos again. Dontos. What if she already knew …

 

Sansa could barely conceal her surprise when they stopped – outside her own chambers. Clegane did not look at her as he pushed the door open, then let go of her wrist and stepped aside to let her pass. He did not say a word. Her frown deepened.

“S- …” _Ser,_ she wanted to say _,_ _again,_ but didn’t. His mouth twitched. And still he did not speak.

“Thank you,” she finally said, keeping her head bowed as she slipped past him.

 

The room was dark and quiet, the fire long since gone out.

She did not understand. Was he not going to bring her before the Queen? Perhaps he would lock her up in here while he informed Cersei, and found someone else to keep his post. Of course, he would not want to abandon the bridge for too long.

The creak of the door tore her out of her thoughts when she realised he was about to leave. She must not let him tell the Queen. Not now, not after Dontos had promised he’d take her home. Not after she had been so good and so carefully quiet for so long. She must not let him go, she thought frantically, there must be something she could do …

 

 “Ser,” she said when he had almost closed the door. She did not have the strength for more than a strained whisper, but he stopped where he stood nonetheless. There was a painful moment in which he seemed to contemplate simply leaving, but in the end he looked back over his shoulder to indicate he had heard. He looked over his right shoulder, showing his face in profile, the right side. In the unsteady flicker of the torches outside and the pale beams of moonlight that slanted in through the tall windows, Sansa could almost make herself believe the other half did not exist. He might not have been comely even without the scars, but at least his face would not frighten her if it were whole. If he were whole. The moonlight reflected in his eye, and she made herself meet his glance, focusing on the tiny little glint below his heavy brow that told her he was looking back at her. Her fingers were cold as they fumbled past the neckline of her gown and began to loosen the bodice beneath.

 

Clegane blinked once, the tiny glint gone for the fraction of a second, reducing him to a dark shadow in the doorway, all save his white cloak. And even white was just another shade of grey in the night. A ghost, perhaps. _A demon._ When the glint reappeared, it seemed to have changed.

“What are you doing?” His voice was hoarse and incredulous, but he turned to face her, and once more she struggled not to flinch when the two halves of his face merged.

He wanted her. She could see it in the way he was looking at her, looking at her like he had the other night, like a man looks at a woman. She knew for certain when he closed the door, from the inside.

 

There was hardly any need for a reply. Not that she would have known what to say anyway – _I am trying to bribe you? Undressing?_ Or perhaps, the simplest, yet boldest answer, so bold Sansa nearly blushed with chaste shame just thinking it, _I am giving you what you want._

Instead, she shrugged her arms out of the sleeves of her gown, then quickly bent down to pick up the skirt, grateful for the chance to hide her face as she began to pull the fabric over her head. Soon, layers of silk and satin enveloped her like a cocoon. She could hear her heart thumping in the perfumed darkness, fluttering against her ribs like a wild bird in a cage. _I’ve gone mad. I’ve finally gone mad. They’ll kill me if they catch us. They’ll kill us both._ And at the same time, there was a part of her that hoped to be caught before it was too late. 

She felt infinitely clumsy, without a maid to help her out of her clothes, stuck in a contraption of lace and embroidery she had thought she understood, up until now. She must look like a fish caught in a net, wriggling back and forth uselessly in increasingly panicked attempts to free herself.

 

When her head finally emerged from the folds, her red hair in disarray around her flushed face, the Hound stood right in front of her, mere inches away. The dress fell to the floor when she let go of it in shock, covering both their feet. He stooped and picked it up, only to fling it away into a dark corner of the room without so much as turning his head to see where it fell. There was something desecrating about the gesture, and the sound of it in the muffled silence made her skin crawl, and she remembered how truly afraid she was.

She took a step back, he made a step towards her, she took another step back. It was almost like a dance. _This is how men and women dance behind closed doors,_ she thought. _Not like they do in the songs._ In the end, there was only the bed behind her. One more step, and it might all be over soon. She dared not take it.

 

He drank in her sight as he stood before her, once more unmoving. Though still wearing her smallclothes, Sansa had never felt so naked before. If there had been a little part of her that had thought she might be wrong, that he might not want her after all, it withered beneath his eyes as they wandered along the curve of her hips and the lacing of her bodice, his gaze more touch than glance.

“Have you bled?” he asked quietly, and the thought seemed to give him pause. For half a heartbeat, there was a way out of all this. Clegane seemed ready to risk getting caught, but not ready to risk getting the King’s bride-to-be with child.

_Better his than Joffrey’s,_ Sansa caught herself thinking, _Joffrey would never know._ For a moment, the thought of putting a bastard boy on the Iron Throne instead of Joffrey’s rightful heir, letting the King die a childless fool, was so delightful that, shaking her head to the Hound, she wished the answer were different.

 

There was a moment of silence before her fingers returned to her bodice, pulling the laces from their loops one by one. She did not look up. He made no move to stop her. And why would he? Something within her crumbled as she realised she had expected him to, that there was a knight beneath his armour and burned skin, or perhaps simply that he had grown fond of her after all. Grown fond of her the way they did in the songs, where love had more to do with oaths and honour and less with beds and smallclothes. He had not laid hand on her when Joffrey ordered him to, and she had been fool enough to think he would refuse this time as well. In the end it was only another small ache in her heart, and she was almost too numb to truly feel it.

 

The bodice fell to the floor, and this time, the Hound did not pick it up. Sansa looked at her small white feet in their sandals, looked at his big, sturdy boots next to them. She shivered briefly, but her face glowed with heat when he brushed a strand of hair back over her shoulder. His hand lingered, the broad, callused thumb brushing along her throat and the line of her jaw, forcing her chin up. The touch was almost gentle, but only almost, pressing into her skin just a hair’s breadth too deep. There was terrible restraint behind it, she realised, and fear coiled in her stomach like a snake as she looked up at him.

 

His face was hideous where the moonlight touched it, the ruin of skin and bone almost cadaverous in its pallor, but his expression was surprisingly soft.

“Your secrets are safe with me, little bird,” he said, and his eyes followed his hand as it wandered down to cup a breast. She trembled, her fingers clenching in the empty air.

_Almost gentle._ She felt her flush from the collarbones up to the roots of her hair, thinking he must feel her heartbeat even through his hardened skin. His face remained unchanged when his other hand joined the first, save perhaps the tiniest hint of incredulous surprise, as if he could not quite believe the flesh beneath his fingers was real. For a moment, if only a moment, she thought she glimpsed something akin to gratitude. Then one heartbeat followed the next, and when she took another breath the moment was gone, together with his face that vanished from sight as he squatted down before her.

 

A part of her wanted to kick at him and scream when he began to remove her remaining clothes, but she didn’t, it was too late now. If anyone found them this way, they would know. Her dress might not be neatly folded, but it was not torn either, the bodice carefully unlaced. _They must never know. I’ll never go home if they know._

She found she could not bear to think of home either, of what her lady mother would say if she could see her this way. What Robb would say. _He’d have his head off,_ she thought, and it was a small comfort. She did not hate the Hound, not like she hated all the others in this city of liars and cruelty, and at times she even felt he was the only one who truly cared about her. Perhaps he was just as much a prisoner here as she, his cell his white cloak and the name they had stuck on him. But even so, she would rather see him dead than feel his hands on her thighs now, as he peeled the final layer of fabric from her skin. She closed her eyes, trying to pretend he was someone else. Someone from a song. A _true_ knight.

 

A tremor passed through her when he kissed her, kissed her _there._ She covered her mouth with both her hands just in time to stifle a gasp. Her cheeks were burning hot against her fingers, so hot her face might have melted just like his, leave her a smouldering pile of ashes.

She had heard the bedding songs, and giggled with Jeyne about them, exchanging hushed speculations as they lay awake until the small hours, but none of the songs had prepared her for this. Sansa felt a pang of regret as she thought of Jeyne, and could not help but wonder what had become of her, but the memory was swept away with a flick of his tongue against her. She writhed, glad to have covered her mouth beforehand. Her legs nearly buckled as she felt her blood rush towards her middle as if to greet his touch, and with it came a surge of pleasure of a kind she had never known before. It felt too good to feel right, making her heart thump so loud and hard it was like thunder in her ears.

 

She was torn between a sigh of relief and a shameless little part of her that had not truly wanted him to stop when he withdrew and rose to his feet.

He undid the clasp, and his cloak fell from his shoulders like a heavy weight to pool around his ankles. She understood, unable to meet his eyes again as he looked at her, flushed and dishevelled as she was. He stood before her not as a knight, and not as a member of the Kingsguard, but as a man.

 

The bed creaked as he lowered both their bodies onto the covers, carefully slow. They froze in unison, disturbed by the sound like beasts in the forest by the snap of a branch under heavy boots. He was the first to move again, sitting back on his knees as he fumbled with his belt and breeches, leaving Sansa to look up at him as she awaited her fate.

Her glance darted away shyly when his laces came undone, but she caught a glimpse of him from the corners of her eyes. She had no measure by which to judge, but trembled nonetheless when she saw him ready, knowing that now there was no escape.

 

His breath still smelled of meat as his body covered hers, the feel of boiled leather and plate against her naked skin making her tense, though a part of her was grateful for it. She could only imagine what he must look like underneath, his skin strewn with scars and calluses and hair, if his hands and face were anything to go by. She almost shuddered, imagining his body to be as ruined and torn as the left side of his face.

Both sides were enshrouded by darkness, but she thought there was another moment of hesitation when he looked at her, as if he were squinting in the darkness. Almost as if he cared what she wanted. But then this moment, too was gone and he moved, slowly but with stubborn determination. She could feel him against her thigh, hard and hot like his breath, and a wave of panic crashed through her, making her cross her legs as best she could. For a second he tensed, gripping her wrist as he pressed her deeper into the featherbed. It was too late, she knew, and a tiny whimper escaped her lips. She had lured him in, like luring a dog with a piece of meat. And now he was going to sink his teeth into it, if she wanted it or not.

 

Instead, he relaxed, slowly, painfully obviously struggling with himself. As so many times before, Sansa had the feeling that there were two spirits within him, forever fighting for dominance. One of them was burned, dog-faced and terrible. The other was tired, bitter and wounded, but not without a spark of goodness. She prayed the latter would win, the one that was almost like a knight. A stray beam of light reflected from his teeth as he bared them in what was either smile or angry grimace, but made him look more dog than man either way. In the end, he let go of her wrist.

“I’m not going to hurt you, girl,” he said, the strain in his voice almost palpable.

_He’s just as bad a liar,_ she thought numbly, nevertheless taking a little comfort in the strange way his words sounded like he had meant to say _I’m not going to hurt you on purpose._

Her breath hitched when his hand slid between her legs, harder than his lips and tongue had been, but, again, almost gentle. Even so, she shuddered helplessly as he pushed a single finger inside, her own hands clasping on the sheets. A moan rose from her throat before she could help it, part from pleasure and part from pain, but his other hand was there, closing over her mouth, stifling the sound.

“Quiet now, little bird.” His voice was heavy as if from wine, but Sansa knew this was a different kind of drunk. It was difficult to know anything else when his finger began to move within her, making her squirm and writhe beneath him, and once more she was grateful for the hand covering her mouth.

It was not long before he pushed another finger inside, making her entire body tense and glow with every little move, and she moved with it, spreading her legs a little further apart despite herself as her hips rose to meet his touch. She was ashamed for the sounds she made, the sighs and gasps, knowing he could still hear them clear as song. He’d told her he’d make her sing for him one day, and one day had come sooner than she had thought.

Just when she was certain she could no longer bear it, her body clenched with a final wave of pleasure. She cried out against his hand as her legs twitched and and trembled until she finally lay still, exhausted, ashamed, but strangely calm. She raised her head weakly when his hands left her, puzzled to find her legs wet with a sticky white substance. Her eyes widened as she glanced up at him in the darkness, but she could not make out his expression.

 

They remained where they were for a moment, wordless in the sweaty aftermath of their release. Then he withdrew from the bed, making her shudder once more as his armour brushed against her. He was neither very quiet nor very elegant about it, cursing under his breath as he laced himself back up and fumbled with the clasp of his cloak in the dark.

“Bugger that,” he swore, and tugged it under his arm instead as he turned to leave. He looked back over his shoulder, squinting as he tried to make out her face in the darkness. He looked over his left shoulder, showing her the burned side, the dog-face. The Hound. She did not flinch.

“One word to anyone,” he growled, and the sound made her skin prickle with goosebumps, “and you’ll regret it even before they get to you.”

She shook her head. _I won’t,_ she wanted to say, but didn’t. They both knew she wouldn’t.

She was, after all, just a little bird. And these were not the things birds sang of.

 


End file.
